Broken
by QoS
Summary: After a punishment, Wildrider has to pick up the pieces - literally. Except his mind may be just as shattered, and more difficult to put back together.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note : This was written for the 28s meme (Angsty), but turned out to be long enough that it became a story of its own. _

* * *

**Chapter 1.**

Wildrider waited to be punished.

He'd slagged up an assignment, and he knew it. Ordered to hold a position and provide backup when it was called for, he'd forgotten that when one of the Autobots began taunting him from cover. Wildrider didn't even remember what the Autobot had shouted to him, only that his wheels had itched to spin, his chassis trembling with the denied thrill of the chase.

He was a terrorist, not a sniper. Patience was not his strong point; causing mayhem was what he had been created for. And so his engine had roared a response as he shot out into the open with a wild laugh, smashing into the Autobot lines. The next thing he knew, the Decepticon channels had gone equally wild, and the fury thudding through the gestalt link was all for him.

He had managed to get away without any injury more serious than a few scrapes, but he knew that wouldn't last for long. They'd returned to the base in a stony silence and Wildrider knew he was going to face Motormaster's brand of discipline at any moment. His only consolation was that Motormaster was rarely turned on by a mission falling through, so chances were he would only have the slag beaten out of him.

It had happened before, and it would happen again. Wildrider shifted on his berth, wishing that Motormaster would simply comm him and get it over with. The anticipation of waiting was worse than the actual beating.

He checked his internal chronometer, wondering what was taking so long. Was Motormaster thinking up some means of punishment that was even worse? Wildrider couldn't imagine anything more painful unless it was out-and-out torture, the kind of thing Vortex would get a kick out of. Motormaster simply didn't go in for that, though – mostly because it would damage his troops to the point where even the Constructicons would lodge complaints about the amount of repairs.

And Motormaster prided himself on not needing devices or instrumentation of any kind to chastise his troops.

After what felt like an hour of fidgeting miserably, Wildrider decided he couldn't bear the silence any longer. He reached up to the shelf above his berth and turned on the stereo, though for once he didn't push the volume up as high as it would go. This was part of the punishment, prolonging the wait, and he looked around for something – anything – to do that would distract him from it.

_No such luck_, he thought glumly. His room was crammed with all sorts of things, from a set of drums to a stuffed kangaroo he had taken from a museum – he loved collecting anything musical, destructive, oddly-shaped or just plain shiny. But none of it really appealed to him at that moment.

_Maybe I should comm him instead._

He thought that over. It would be stupid to antagonize Motormaster further, but what if doing that made him hurry up and get the punishment over with already? Then at least it would be over and done with, and he could spend his time recovering rather than worrying in his room. Wildrider brightened up at once. _That's a good--_

His door beeped, then slid open.

For a moment Wildrider wasn't sure how that had happened, and then Motormaster stepped into the room. _Oh, right._ As his commander, Motormaster could override his access code. _But… what's he doing here?_

A single cold shiver ran down his back, like a drop of liquid ice tracing the length of his spinal strut as the door hissed shut.

Motormaster stood there, watching him out of flat purple optics that gave nothing away, and Wildrider found himself hoping fervently that he wasn't going to be interfaced. He was used to that – all the Stunticons were – but he didn't want it to be done on his berth. He supposed the berth might be able to take Motormaster's weight, but he didn't want to be reminded of the experience each time he tried to recharge.

_Maybe I'll forget it somehow,_ he thought. He knew his memory wasn't very good – that was a side-effect of being insane. Problem was, Motormaster knew that as well, and Wildrider had a feeling that Motormaster was going to mete out some punishment he would remember for the rest of his life, whether his mind was slagged-up or not.

"You cost us an energon shipment," Motormaster said finally.

Wildrider said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Motormaster hated excuses and despised apologies, so he only looked down at his feet and braced himself for a blow.

"Sometimes I think I should get all your processors wiped and reprogrammed," Motormaster continued. His voice was so matter-of-fact that it made Wildrider's internal components clench. "Slag, why bother with the reprogramming? A drone would be more reliable than you are. Wouldn't make so much fragging noise either."

_He wouldn't. It would break the gestalt bond and hurt all of us._ Wildrider held on to that conviction desperately and said nothing.

Motormaster crossed the distance between them, slid a finger under Wildrider's chin and tilted his face up. Wildrider fought not to react to the closeness, to the way his dermal plating felt as though it would crawl from the touch. "But then I thought I'd give you another chance."

He smiled, and Wildrider felt sick with dread. _Don't show it. Don't show anything._ Motormaster loathed it when the Stunticons exhibited any sign of weakness, and although there had been a few times in the past when Wildrider had begged for mercy, he'd learned fast enough that that was a good way to simply worsen the ordeal.

"But there's something you have to learn." Motormaster let his hand drop. "You lost us a good opportunity to prove our worth to Megatron. Not to mention a lot of energon. So you're going to lose a few things as well."

Wildrider looked at him blankly. _Lose a few things_? That made him think of something falling out of a subspace pocket or his passenger compartment; what did Motormaster mean by--

Motormaster stepped back and drew his sword.

Wildrider flinched instinctively, but the weapon wasn't aimed at him. Motormaster swung it in a hard, gleaming arc and the blade smashed into Wildrider's stereo system.

The music ended in a crunch. Shards of hot metal and molten plastic flew everywhere, but Wildrider couldn't have moved if he wanted to. He stood frozen. Motormaster swept a row of geodes off a lower shelf into his free hand, gathering them up, then closed his fist tightly. There was a low grinding sound, and when he opened his fingers, quartz fragments fell like glittering rain to the floor.

Wildrider felt his mouth components move, but nothing came out of his vocalizer. _No_, he thought.

Motormaster didn't even pause to look at the remains of the geodes. He turned and drove a foot into the drum kit. The huge bass drum crumpled as though it had been made of paper, and the frame of the floor tom snapped.

_Don't smash anything else. Please--_

Motormaster slashed a box of DVDs in half without even opening it, then tore the dragon-shaped fighter kite from the wall. It dropped in a heap of shreds as he turned, looking slowly around the room. His stare stopped on the kangaroo.

Wildrider felt as though an invisible vise around his throat had opened, just enough to let a word through. "No!" he said.

He'd had the kangaroo for years, ever since he and Drag Strip had broken into a museum at night to steal some component for Megatron's latest weapon. For some reason he'd driven through the wrong wing, but he'd pulled up with a screech of brakes when he saw the stuffed and mounted kangaroo. Patchy though his memory often was, he still remembered the reflections of headlights in its black glass eyes. He looked down to see the smaller kangaroo poking its head out of a compartment in the larger one's abdominal fur.

_Just like Soundwave, only cute! _He transformed at once and checked the compartment to see if there were any other midgets inside, but there was just the one. _Still cute, though,_ he thought and took the kangaroo home. It had sat in a corner of his room from then on, with the little one looking up from its belly.

Motormaster grimaced in disgust and took a stride towards it, raising his sword.

Without thinking, Wildrider flung himself at Motormaster, grabbing his sword-arm and pulling it aside. Motormaster turned on him at once, closing his free hand around the upper edge of Wildrider's chestplate, fingers digging painfully into the gap between plates of armor. He wrenched his arm free and flung Wildrider away with a contemptuous flick of his hand. Wildrider's shoulder slammed into a funhouse mirror so hard that it shattered the glass and left a deep dent in the mirror's backing. He slumped to the floor, half-dazed.

The sword swung for the last time. As if he was watching it all in slow-motion, Wildrider saw the kangaroo's head tilt to one side. The dark eyes gleamed once before it struck the floor and rolled away.

Motormaster subspaced his sword and turned to Wildrider. "Were you fond of that… thing?"

Wildrider couldn't speak. His shoulder throbbed, but the sensation didn't seem to penetrate the cold emptiness that filled his chest. He lay with his back to the wall and thought, _Just let it be over. _

"I'll take that as a yes. Finish it off."

_Huh?_ Confused, Wildrider looked up and met Motormaster's optics.

"Finish it off?" he repeated.

"With your gun, idiot." Motormaster prodded the kangaroo's body with his foot. "Get rid of the rest of it. Learn to obey orders for once."

Wildrider looked at the kangaroo's decapitated body. _I could have put its head back on after Motormaster left – it wouldn't have been the same, but I could have salvaged it._ The smaller kangaroo seemed to look back at him, little paws on the edge of the compartment as if it was ready to hop out at any moment.

"Or all the rest of the useless slag in here goes as well," Motormaster said. "_Now_."

With an effort, Wildrider drew his scattershot gun and adjusted the settings so that the lasters would emerge in a tight concentrated beam. For a moment – a moment only – he imagined turning that on Motormaster, shooting straight into his face.

He fired at the remains of the kangaroo instead. There was a soft _phht_ and the body exploded into a cloud of dust.

Motormaster's engine rumbled with satisfaction. He turned and left the room without a backward look.

_I hate you,_ Wildrider thought dully. _I hate you._ The sentiment was useless too – Motormaster knew it and didn't care – but he couldn't help saying it silently, and the words were like a litany that meant he wouldn't need to think about anything else.

The gun slipped from his fingers and he drew his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself as if to make a smaller target. He knew he couldn't just sit there for long, but he told himself that he would only need to wait until the dust settled.

Then he would decide what to do with the ruins in his room.

There was a quiet knock on the door. Wildrider's optics onlined involuntarily, but he knew at once that it was his teammates – he didn't even need a gestalt link to tell him that. _Who else would it be?_

"Wildrider?" Drag Strip's voice said.

Wildrider just wanted to be left alone, but he also knew he couldn't simply ignore his teammates if he wanted them to go away. So he dragged himself to his feet and went to the door, trying to ignore what had once been his belongings.

He didn't want his teammates seeing what had happened – somehow, that would make the destruction even more real. So he slid the door half-open, keeping his frame in the doorway to block anyone's view of a room that looked as if Motormaster had driven through it in alt-mode.

Breakdown and Drag Strip were outside. Drag Strip looked him over, but Breakdown seemed to have caught a glimpse of something behind him, because he angled his head for a better look.

"You okay?" he said tentatively.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Wildrider's voice came out a little staticky, and he forced himself to smile to compensate for that.

"What happened in there?" Breakdown stepped to one side, still trying to see around Wildrider.

"Nothing." Wildrider twitched his uninjured shoulder in a shrug. "The boss just broke something, that's all."

Breakdown still looked concerned. "D'you need some help--"

"No, 'course not." Wildrider attempted a cheerful laugh. It must have sounded less than cheerful, because they both looked at him as if he was choking. "I just need to clean up a little, that's all. You guys don't need to waste your time." _Slag, I have to distract them somehow._ "Where's Dead End?"

Breakdown tilted his head to one side, in the direction of Motormaster's quarters.

"Oh." That made sense and wasn't entirely unexpected – Motormaster had been kind of revved up after the session – but Wildrider still felt a twinge of guilt, as if Dead End was taking a punishment that should have been his.

"Well, if you're sure you're all right…" Breakdown said. Wildrider nodded emphatically, but his fingers, on the inside of the door where no one could see them, locked around the doorgrip so hard that they hurt. He fought to contain himself, clamping down on his emotions before they could feed into the gestalt link.

"We'll be in the common room," Drag Strip said. "I want to watch _The Fast and the Furious_."

"Have fun," Wildrider said, and closed the door. Then he let his knees fold, leaned against the smooth metal and offlined his optics.

"Something's wrong," he heard Breakdown say, voice muffled by the door.

"Oh, he's okay," Drag Strip said. "You saw him – he just had a dent or two."

"Yeah, but he said Motormaster broke something--"

"So? You know Wildrider – he loves smashing things up. He'd have broken whatever it was himself sooner or later. And he doesn't even need repairs, the lucky slagger." Their voices faded into the distance.

_Lucky,_ Wildrider thought, optics still offline. _Yeah, I guess I am. Compared to some of the punishments Motormaster's handed out, this is nothing. He didn't beat me into stasis lock, did he? He didn't force me to 'face either._

_I'm so lucky. _

He could avoid looking at the remains of his things, but his olfactory sensors picked up the smell of scorched organic material and molten plastic. And the silence was even worse, until a ping on his radio interrupted it, and he accepted the transmission automatically.

"_Wildrider?_" Drag Strip said. "_If you're cleaning up, I found something you could use. I'll leave it outside your room._"

"_Okay_," Wildrider said tonelessly, too tired to even wonder what it was. He wasn't too surprised at the offer; Drag Strip was nearly always indifferent and dismissive in public, afraid of appearing in the least soft, but he could be nicer when he was sure no one would know about it.

He heard a soft scuffling sound outside, then more silence. He thought of Breakdown and Drag Strip curled up on the couch watching the film, and hoped Dead End wasn't having too bad a time of it.

After a while he got up and opened the door, not knowing what else to do. Outside, in the empty corridor, was a box.

No, a crate, an empty crate. Wildrider looked down at it blankly, wondering what to do with it, and then saw the words TRASH DISPOSAL on its side.

_It's for my things. _The thought swam slowly up from his processors, like a bubble rising from the depths of the sea. _I can put them in it and take them down to be recycled or incinerated. This morning they were my belongings that I collected and kept safe, and now they're trash. _

He picked the crate up, carried it into his room and closed the door. He set the crate down on the floor and reached for the kangaroo's decapitated head. That was going in first, so he wouldn't have to look at the black glass eyes watching him, asking silently why he had destroyed its body, why he had let it all happen.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"It's okay," the kangaroo replied.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2.**

Wildrider twitched, then stared at the kangaroo's head, not sure whether to be surprised. He'd heard that Optimus Prime's severed head had managed to speak to Megatron once, so maybe organics could do the same thing.

On the other hand, it was always possible that that was another side-effect of his insanity. He had what Dead End called "episodes" once in a while – usually when reality became too difficult to bear.

"You're not mad at me?" he said.

"Why would I be?" the kangaroo said. "You didn't mean to hurt me. And while I hate to point out the obvious, you must have noticed that I'm dead. It doesn't hurt to be shot at when you're dead."

"I wish I was dead, then," Wildrider said bitterly. He knew that wasn't like him – of all the Stunticons, he enjoyed life the most – but at the moment there was nothing to enjoy. And he couldn't see anything to live for either, except more punishment in the future when he slagged up again and Motormaster smashed the rest of his things. _Then I can live in an empty room. Or maybe I'll just get into this box instead of the trash._

He rested his elbow on the edge of the crate and looked into it. _Why not? Humans get put in boxes after they deactivate, so_ _I should just get into this one. No one could hurt me if I was in a box._

"Wildrider," the kangaroo said gently, "it'll be all right."

"No, it won't," Wildrider said without looking away from the crate. He felt defeated in a way the Autobots would never have been able to make him feel, and his shoulders slumped. "You don't know Motormaster like I do. Once he finds a good way to discipline you, he'll do it again and again and again, and I won't have anything left in the end."

"Which end?" the kangaroo said.

"Dead End." Wildrider giggled, then realized that he was starting to slide off the edge. What did that matter now, though? "I should be more like him," he said, swallowing a spurt of crazy laughter. "If I didn't care about anything--"

"Which end?" the kangaroo said again. "That one?"

The bottom of the crate rippled and turned to liquid. Wildrider stared in fascination – it was as though the crate and floor and decks beneath him and the ship's hull itself had vanished, leaving nothing between him and the ocean. He felt as though he was staring down into a great distance, like looking into a well.

"Hey, that's cool," he said. "How did you--"

An image wobbled beneath the water. It reminded Wildrider of the time he had painted the words _Someone is wotching you_ on the bottom of a cube of energon, then left it at Breakdown's place on the table. The joke had lasted exactly long enough for Dead End to point out the misspelling.

This was more fascinating than funny, though, and he watched as the water drained away and disappeared, leaving the image clear. He saw bare cliffs and fallen rocks, but a familiar shadow fell across them. Menasor straightened up from a crouch, Motormaster's sword appearing in one hand.

Wildrider tensed, wondering if something else of his was going to be smashed, but Menasor slid out from behind the piled boulders that had concealed him. Something flashed on the edge of the image, a green and purple smudge that resolved itself into a Constructicon. _No, all the Constructicons._ _Devastator_.

Except he turned too slowly as Menasor bulled towards him. Wildrider couldn't hear anything, but for once the silence didn't bother him. He didn't think he could have looked away from the vision before him if Motormaster had stormed back in.

The sword whirled with unstoppable force. Wildrider nearly flinched in sympathy as it smashed into the Constructicon gestalt, but he didn't expect to see Devastator split into his components. _That's weird. He's not that much of a wuss._

_Why are we fighting Devastator, anyway?_ The Constructicons had never tried to usurp Megatron. _And where are we?_ He didn't recognize anything – not the place and not even the constellations in the sky.

The Constructicons reformed Devastator, to Wildrider's relief. That was the one normal thing in the whole bizarre scenario. Red optics burned in the battered faceplate, and Devastator's mouth moved as he spoke.

Without looking away, Wildrider knocked sharply on the side of the crate, wondering if that would make the sound come on somehow. That didn't succeed, but Menasor did. One-handed, he hefted the sword. Energy burned raw and bitter along its edge, eclipsing even the bright yellow arm that held it.

He half-twisted, the sword blurring through the air almost too fast to see and all his strength was behind the swing. When the Constructicons went down _that_ time, they didn't re-combine. The five of them lay in a dazed heap before Menasor

_Five?_ Wildrider frowned as the Constructicons bolted for cover, but as they scattered he saw what had lain between them and Menasor. A single cube of energon glowed on the ground.

_That's what we were fighting for? One cube? _

Menasor reached down for the cube and the scene rippled. It went out of focus and changed to a featureless silver. Wildrider turned to look at the kangaroo's head.

"What the frag _was _that?" he said.

"Look again," the kangaroo said.

Wildrider glanced down. He saw a huge hall, which looked even larger with great windows that showed another unfamiliar sky and buildings that were lit up. The tiny shapes of fliers circled a few of them. Inside, though, the hall was filled with familiar mechs – the Seekers stood to one side and the Constructicons seemed to be providing music from an upper gallery.

At the end of the hall, on a throne set on a high dais, was Megatron.

"Where is this?" Wildrider said without daring to take his optics off the scene in case it changed before he could look back. Shockwave stood to one side of Megatron. "Is it Cybertron? Is it after we win the war?"

Motormaster stepped into the scene and strode towards the throne. The other Stunticons flanked him, keeping pace as he approached Megatron. Wildrider stared at the small image of himself, and couldn't help being pleased. His paint looked freshly applied, his glass polished deep as rubies and his chrome gleaming.

_I'm all shiny_. He reached down to see if he could jab Motormaster in the back of the head and maybe knock him over, but the scene just wobbled under his touch and Motormaster kept walking until he reached the dais.

He went to one knee, and the other Stunticons did the same. Megatron smiled slightly, and the scene faded.

"No, no!" Wildrider said. "I didn't mean to do that. Change it back. I wanna see what--"

The bottom of the crate turned a glossy purple. Wildrider drew back a little, startled, and the scene receded as well. He was looking into an optic… an optic set in a red faceplate… his own face, he realized a moment later. Wires and cables plugged into his cranial unit, trailing from the empty socket of his other optic. A tube fed dark fuel into his mouth.

"What the _frag_?"

The scene receded even further. The wires were hooked up to machines where dials monitored his systems and a printer spat out paper that a human was collecting. A few more humans – armed and in navy-blue uniforms – seemed to be patrolling the area, though they didn't even glance at his immobile form. As though he had been there for so long that they had grown accustomed to him.

_Or as though I can't do anything to defend myself,_ he thought numbly as he saw his open chest and the bare circuits that had been drawn out of his half-dissected hands and plugged back in to make feedback loops. The scene didn't show his legs, and Wildrider wondered whether that was because he no longer had any.

The colors ebbed away as though being washed out of the picture, and a new picture began to form. To his relief he was alive in it, and more than alive, _racing_. Racing against Dead End, though for some reason they were in a spaceship, and it wasn't Astrotrain.

They neared an armory just as its door began to open. Dead End braked, burning speed and skidding as he did so to line up perfectly parallel with the armory's door. It was such a showy maneuver that Wildrider's own engine revved a little, but the grey Ferrari in the scene only braked even more sharply, ended up airborne – transforming as he did so – and slid smoothly over Dead End's roof to land on his feet on the other side.

Wildrider grinned. _Hey, that was neat too--_

The door of the armory slid open completely and now he saw who had opened it. The Aerialbot commander stood in the doorway with plasma cannons in both hands.

Wildrider froze, but Dead End didn't even seem to notice Silverbolt as he transformed languidly and brushed a speck of dust off his roof. Silverbolt was saying something, but the sound on Wildrider's makeshift television still wasn't working. He saw himself grin and hold out a hand. Silverbolt tossed him one cannon and Dead End took the other.

"Why is he…" Wildrider couldn't ever recall being more bewildered. "Are we… are we working together?" He thought he would prefer to be back on wherever-it-was fighting Devastator.

The scene altered. A grey Ferrari half-drove and half-bounced through a narrow ravine. The red windows and Decepticon symbol were familiar enough, but to Wildrider's fascination, that car had far more artillery than he did. A cannon of some sort was mounted on the roof, and there were missile launchers on each door. He brightened up at once, wondering if those could take planes down.

_Or just plain blow up Autobots,_ he thought as the police car appeared suddenly, blocking the path through the canyon, strobe lights flashing. The Ferrari's headlong rush never slowed, and one missile fired.

Both of Prowl's headlights flipped over and gun barrels emerged. He shot the missile out of the air in the next instant.

_Ooh. Now it's getting interesting._ Apparently the Autobot had had some modifications too.

Prowl accelerated. Wildrider couldn't hear the police car's engine roaring, but he didn't need to – the cloud of dust flung up by its rear tires was more than enough – and its shape grew swiftly larger as it closed the distance between itself and the Ferrari. It drove faster than he had ever seen Prowl move, and waves of heat-shimmer rose into the air above it. The sight was confused, blurring, moving at such speed that some 'cons wouldn't have been able to see what happened next.

But Wildrider was used to the lightning pace of events on a battlefield, accustomed to spotting details through choking gusts of smoke and dust. And he noticed everything about road vehicles. He saw the police car's hubcaps protrude outward as if bulging, saw the bulges turn to steel spikes with serrated ridges. The spikes spun.

Prowl slewed to one side as the Ferrari tried to ram him, barely dodging its reinforced grille. He swept back in sideways to bring the whirring spikes against the Ferrari's wheels, but the grey car reacted as fast. It spun around and shot vertically up the side of the cliff, then let gravity pull it into a flip that sent it flying through the air. Twisting, it fired the remaining missile – not at Prowl, but at the cliff above him.

The police car skidded to a near-stop, trying to turn, and a hail of boulders crashed down on it. A wall of dust rose. Wildrider gripped the edges of the crate, willing the scene to clear, and nearly cheered when it did.

He stood there, a little battered, his paintjob smeared to a uniform dullness and his gun in his hands, but there was no sign of Prowl beneath the cairn of rocks. _Good,_ Wildrider thought. _I've never seen anything like that on tires… hey, I wonder if the Constructicons could fit them on mine? _It was worth a--

Behind the small figure of himself, the ground erupted.

In the scene, Wildrider spun around, but it was already too late. A pale arm shot up through cracked rock. A cable burst from its wrist, whipped out and wrapped itself around the barrel of his scattershot gun. Wildrider saw his own finger tighten on the trigger at once.

Except that was what Prowl had expected him to do, and the cable hadn't been intended to yank the gun out of his hands. It had been to squeeze the barrel shut.

The blinding flash of heat sent him stumbling back, and Prowl took advantage of the moment to drag himself free of the ground. He was battered and scraped, but that wasn't what startled Wildrider – it was the sight of the Autobot's optics.

Or what had been the Autobot's optics, because there was nothing there now, only two hollows that seemed to hold an endless depth. Deadspace and emptiness.

The scene altered. Wildrider yelled in frustration, but stopped as soon as he saw Megatron. Even if he was watching through a crate somehow, only one 'con got to shout his cranial unit off in Megatron's presence, and that was Megatron.

The Decepticon leader looked as though he was in another spaceship, but one which had sustained a lot of damage. There were new scorch marks on the floor, too, and the walls were an ugly orange color. Wildrider looked with interest at the mechs surrounding Megatron and listening as he spoke silently, but he couldn't see himself or any of the other Stunticons anywhere.

Megatron seemed to have finished giving orders. Thundercracker saluted and walked off, while Reflector's three components nodded in unison. Only Starscream, as usual, seemed displeased. He stalked away across the length of the room, past a huge grey form that hung in chains from the roof and swayed a little as the tip of his wing clipped it.

Wildrider frowned. He knew a deactivated Transformer when he saw one, but that shell looked like it might have been Optimus Prime when it had been alive. _Is that the Ark? Did we win the war?_ He had no objections at all to such a happy finale, but what puzzled him were the lack of Stunticons. Everyone else was there – well, everyone except the Combaticons, but they had never been all that loyal – so where was Megatron's elite gestalt?

"See the plaque on the wall?" a voice said.

Wildrider started – he had forgotten all about the kangaroo whose head he still held – but the small plaque caught his attention at once. He dialed up the zoom function on his optics and read the words that looked as though they had been burned on to flat metal with a laser.

_In memory of the Stunticons, who gave their lives to the Decepticon cause. _

"We did _what?_" Wildrider's voice came out as a squawk, but the scene changed again. This time, even when he saw himself tearing down an open highway with the sun pouring down on him, he didn't relax. Something terrible was going to happen, he just knew it. Even though the place looked like Earth and he was evidently alive, there was sure to be some nasty surprise in store.

In the distance was a city, and the grey Ferrari sped towards it.

The sunlight made the city blaze as if it was plated with mirrors. Even at that distance, it stung Wildrider's optics a little, but the Ferrari only rocketed on towards huge gates that opened at the last moment. Wildrider watched, wondering if he would have a demolition derby or something else that felt normal.

The road ahead was… strange, though. The Ferrari took it easily. Not only was it kept in excellent condition, but it was deserted, no traffic lights or any such human slag. It would have been perfect for racing, except that it looped and turned back on itself periodically as if tracing a pattern through the city. Wildrider could tell that the Ferrari was making progress onward, but he couldn't understand why the road wasn't just straight, instead of curving and twisting and even making what looked like a figure-S track.

Before he could decipher that, though he saw the statues of racecars on either side, all on pedestals. Some were in marble and others metal, but they all looked ferociously gaudy, plated with gold or studded with topazes.

Wildrider began to get a suspicious feeling, especially when the statues changed to ones of a mech who seemed somehow familiar (although huge and impossibly regal). Moments later he reached the end of the road. It was the heart of the city, and all around were giant mirrors that reflected Drag Strip, who was in the central plaza. He was stretched out on a pedestal even higher than Megatron's dais, surrounded by humans who seemed to be polishing him, bringing him energon and singing his praises in general. Bright yellow banners streamed out overhead. And to Wildrider's utter horror, he realized that even the road which had led him there had been built to spell out Drag Strip's name.

"Okay, that's it! _Stop!_"

Wildrider looked around desperately for a lid, found none and turned the crate upside down instead. He was half afraid that the scene would spill out somehow, maybe swallowing him up and sending him to some world where Drag Strip's ego reigned unchecked, but to his relief the crate behaved just like a crate. Sighing, he leveled an accusing look at the kangaroo's head, which gazed back at him innocently.

"What _was_ that?" he said, gesturing at the crate with his free hand.

The kangaroo blinked. "Life isn't a straight road with only one possible end. In the future, it could be better than it is now."

"It could be worse, too!" Wildrider thought the only end he'd really liked had been the one on Cybertron, where they had all gathered for Megatron's victory, and even that scene had been over before it had begun. Though if there was some future Earth where he had a city to himself, like Drag Strip, it wouldn't be too bad either. Especially if his city had obstacle courses and ramps and flyovers and plenty of things to crash into, things that looked like Motormaster.

He turned the crate over curiously, but the bottom was solid. He tapped it hard with a finger, but nothing happened. Disappointed, he looked at the kangaroo, which twitched muscles above its eyes as if trying to raise nonexistent optic ridges.

"It distracted you when you needed it. You don't need it any more."

_I guess not._ Wildrider set the kangaroo's head down carefully. _Might as well start cleaning up,_ he thought and started to fill the crate.

"So none of it was real?" he said as he worked. "I'm fragged in the head, so maybe I just imagined that I saw us starving to death or winning the war. But if it wasn't my imagination, I want to know. I want to know how it's going to end for us."

"You can't and it doesn't." The kangaroo spoke so simply that for a moment Wildrider thought it had gone as crazy as he was – maybe insanity was contagious if you shared a room. "It's like looking down a highway and knowing one exit ramp will take you north and the other south. Doesn't mean you know right away which one you're going to take. Or which one will be better for you, in the long drive. You know now that there could be futures where you fail and worlds where you win, but I'm sure you'd rather be alive and fighting over a cube of energon than dead and remembered only in a few words on the wall of the Autobot ship. Which Megatron would have abandoned anyway when he returned to Cybertron."

"You mean he wouldn't even have taken our frames to the Crypt?"

"There was nothing to take."

Wildrider couldn't decide whether to be horrified or confused, and settled for both. "How did that even… wait, how do you know?"

The kangaroo's gaze shifted from side to side. "I'm guessing," it said, and peeked cautiously at him.

Wildrider didn't buy the excuse. "C'mon, tell me! Or I'll… I'll…" He couldn't think of any threat which would work on something which had been beheaded and shot at, but seemed unconcerned. "Okay, then tell me how can I make sure that we don't end up dead. Or with me being some humans' prisoner with wires stuffed up ports I didn't even know I had."

The kangaroo tilted its head a little as if deep in thought. "The only sure way to not die is to never stop living."

Wildrider glared at it. "I think I liked it better when you weren't talking."

"Sorry." The kangaroo glanced down. "Didn't mean to get all philosophical on you. What I meant was… don't feel sorry for yourself or be ready to give up too soon. Your team's already got that, so they don't need any more of it. They need you instead."

Wildrider couldn't help feeling a little better – like the time he had gotten lost in some Arabian desert, had nearly burned his engine out from overheating and had then driven straight into an oasis because he'd taken it for a mirage. He still remembered the _glub-glub_ of water bubbling through his vents and the delicious cool feeling as he'd sunk beneath the surface.

The best part, though, had been jumping out when Motormaster approached the oasis, looked around and demanded to know where he was.

"See?" The corners of the kangaroo's mouth turned up. "I can _talk_ about living but you _do_ it. And none of what you saw was the end, either. Life has a way of going on, no matter what happens or who's defeated, so sooner or later you have to go on with it."

Wildrider had almost finished filling the crate. "So it's like a film?" he said as he picked up the last few things. "You think it's over when the credits roll, but it turns out there's a sequel?"

"Yeah. Except you get to decide whether there is one – and to some extent, what role you're going to play."

Wildrider liked the sound of that. He propped his elbows on the crate and leaned forward. "Okay, but you've got to tell me how you know all this. How 'bout if I give you a… a…" What could a disembodied head use? "A hat?"

Before the kangaroo could reply, there was a knock on the door.

Wildrider jerked, turning sharply before he realized it couldn't be Motormaster, who wouldn't have knocked. When he gave the order to open, the door slid aside and Breakdown looked around and behind him before stepping in.

"We're halfway through the film, so I thought you might need some help," he said.

Wildrider grinned, gesturing at the full crate. "Nah. I cleaned it all up."

The tentative, concerned expression drained off Breakdown's face, leaving it curiously blank. His gaze slid across the room and when it returned to Wildrider, he looked skeptical instead.

"What?" Wildrider said.

"Wildrider," Breakdown said carefully, "you've boxed up everything that _isn't_ broken."

Wildrider felt his mouth open and close. He stared around and saw for the first time what he had done. "Slag." Shaking his head, he began to empty the crate. "I must've gotten distracted talking to it."

"To what?" Breakdown knelt beside the crate and took the collection of model cars out.

"The kangaroo. Well, its head anyway."

Breakdown stopped. "Its head?"

Wildrider pointed at the kangaroo's head, waiting for it to confirm what he had just said. There was no reply. The black glass eyes looked flat as a stone floor, and less revealing.

"Well, it _was_ talking," he said, turning to Breakdown. "It told me things would be better in the future – no, no, there was more than that, it showed me what might happen to us! In the crate. It was like watching different clips of shows on TV, 'cause there was one where we were all on Cybertron and there was another where Prowl was so fragging--"

Breakdown slapped him.

Wildrider's head snapped to one side. For a moment he thought he was in some kind of bizarre scenario all over again, but there hadn't been any sound previously. Now the sharp _clank_ of metal on metal still rang in his audials, and the numbness of the impact gave way to a hot sting.

Not that that would have bothered him at all, normally – thanks to Motormaster, his pain threshold was almost as high as a Seeker's cruising altitude. But what left him shocked was being hit by Breakdown. That had never happened before. Breakdown swung back when they fought or grappled playfully, but he never threw the first punch.

"Wildrider?" Breakdown said.

Still unable to process what had just happened, Wildrider turned his head, half-expecting to see some crazy Prowl-like version of Breakdown with molten optics and spiked armor. There was no such change, though, and Breakdown looked just as taken aback. _I can't believe he hit me_, Wildrider thought. _He's so quiet and nervous and scared--_

_He still is._

The gestalt link showed him that. He did what he always did when something couldn't be understood with his conscious mind – he sank into the subconscious side of it instead, the bond that would exist as long as they lived. And he felt Breakdown's fear clearly. Not fear of him, but of his continuing to slide off the edge, of Motormaster's reaction but worse, of what would happen if they couldn't bring him back.

Since he knew exactly what Breakdown did under such circumstances, he tapped into the Stunticon channel.

"_It's Wildrider_," he heard Breakdown say. "_He's having another epitaph."_

"_Episode_," Dead End corrected.

Drag Strip made a contemptuous sound. "_Wildrider doesn't have episodes – he has an entire fragging series_."

"_You watch it or I'll flatten your faceplate,_" Wildrider snapped. Just because he was crazy didn't mean he had to take slag from Drag Strip. "_And I won't tell you about your city either. I'll bet those humans spit in your energon when you aren't looking._"

The silence that followed ended only when Breakdown said, "_See what I mean?_" and cut the transmission. He looked at Wildrider, then spoke quietly and openly. "Wildrider… whatever you think you saw, it wasn't real. None of it."

"But…" Wildrider didn't mind not being able to see the scenes in the bottom of the crate, but he felt as if Breakdown was taking away their afterimages in his memory as well. He looked at the kangaroo for help but the severed head just lay on the ground, dead and silent.

"You were imagining things," Breakdown said, "and we don't blame you. That's… well, that's just a conditioner you have."

_In other words, I'm insane_, Wildrider thought. So it hadn't been something special that had happened to make up for what Motormaster had done. It hadn't been a secret revealed to him and him alone. It had just been his fragged-up, broken, stupid stupid _stupid_ mind.

"You can't really help it, but you're okay now," Breakdown said. "Doesn't matter what you were saying before. You're fine now."

"I guess I am," Wildrider said slowly. He didn't feel fine, but that was better than Breakdown agreeing with him and telling him what a mess he was. The magic was gone, anyway, long gone. The kangaroo's head was just that – a stuffed animal's head that would be incinerated soon – the crate was a crate, and a room half full of broken things was a room half full of broken things.

The tense line of Breakdown's shoulders relaxed, and he smiled hesitantly. "I'll help clean up, okay?" Wildrider nodded, and he glanced around. "We can get another kite. But he broke your cookie clock too."

"Uh, no, I opened that up. I'm gonna paint the cuckoo to look like Laserbeak."

Breakdown stared at him, shook his head and continued to work. Wildrider joined him, and within minutes it was done – everything ruined was in the crate. _Except me_, Wildrider thought as Breakdown put the kangaroo's head inside, on top of the rest of the trash. He looked from the broken things in the box to the whole ones on their shelves – half of his belongings in one place and half in the other.

And he realized that while part of him was broken too, and had been since the moment of his creation, the other part wasn't. Maybe it never would be, no matter what happened in the future. Or even in the present. He'd managed to struggle back after what Motormaster had done – and had made him do – to his belongings, and he hadn't given in to despair or hopelessness. He would live. _We all will_.

"I'll take that," he said as Breakdown got up with the crate in his arms. Breakdown relinquished it, but the skeptical look appeared again.

Wildrider sighed. "I'm going down to the incinerators, Breakdown. You can come with me if you think I'm going to put all this in my subspace compartments instead."

"I guess it's your call if you are." Breakdown opened the door.

"Slag, I'm not that crazy." Wildrider did keep a lot of what the other Stunticons considered junk in his subspace pockets, but none of it was smashed or nonfunctioning. "I'm not even broken." _Just cracked… and sometimes the cracks let the light in._

"Or out," the kangaroo whispered as he walked away down the corridor.

THE END

_Author's note : Thanks for reading and reviewing. :) The first scenario Wildrider sees is taken from the episode "Five Faces of Darkness", and others are from either AUs or as-yet-unwritten fics of mine. Except the one with Drag Strip's city, which is too horrifying to contemplate for long.  
_

_Also, the modification to Prowl's tires is a shameless rip-off from Messala's chariot wheels in the film _Ben-Hur. 


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